We had been invited to dinner at the home of the daughter of my Brother Youssef. It is only a short walk from where I am staying with him.
The hostess had put special efforts into the dinner which turned out to be delicious.
I had brought a Trapiche Malbec which served its purpose well. It was soon gulped down and the hostess let me select a wine from her collection.
I had never tasted this one, it was pleasant for the occasion. Conversation flowed as it covered the contemporary, touching the reality of the time and place in USA. The intergenerational and International presence made the chat more interesting.
We walked home and I settled down in front of the computer to catch up on my Medicine, Anthropology, International News items (I do not watch US TV nor follow any USA based website, I do read New York Times daily a left over ritual from my adolescent days).
Suddenly there was a knock at the window through which I look at the trees and the lights of the houses nearby and those of passing cars.
She waved vigorously and I thought of that distant day, 10 years earlier of a lunch along rue Saint Germain, where we had walked from her hotel in rue de Rivoli just across from Jardin des Tuileries
I went outside and we quickly exchange some pleasantries but I realized that this was not the time for nostalgic recollections.
She had come to visit her parents. She is fully vaccinated and she had done her last covid test about one month ago. She had felt some pain in the eyes this morning and a slight headache. She realized that in the rare chance if she were to have Covid 19, she would be putting her elderly parents at risk.
What to do? It was around 9 pm on a very popular holiday. She remembered that I visit this house, three doors from her parents and she knew I was a traveller but a Physician. She was so surprised to see me at my desk fully visible through the large window.
She explained the situation, thought that being a doctor I might have a quick antigen home test. Her guess was correct, so we decided to do a quick test on her, right in front of the house.
One has to wait for 15 min for the result, and it was indeed a long 15 minutes. I checked her temperature 97 F , her blood oxygenation was 98 % and she has not lost her olfactory sense.
Reminded me of waiting for Godot. If she had antigens in her nose swab, the second line on the sensor card would become apparent quickly. No she did not have .. we both were happy.
Indians say that things do not happen for a reason, it is that we are not smart enough to understand why. But I have a feeling why this happened..
Why did a lady I had met for the first time in Paris ten years ago, appear in front of my window on this dark night of a favourite holiday?
Superficially it looks, a young woman needed to have dinner (an important dinner in the American calendar), but she needed something or someone to alleviate her anxiety. If she had come 10 minutes earlier, I wouldn't have been here, as I was at the home where I had dinner this evening.
It so happened we had a rapid test kit in the house. What is the value of it if not to use in an urgent situation and this one was certainly an urgent situation.
A very happy daughter, going to visit and have dinner with her parents.
My gesture was simple. I am a healer, Sanador in Spanish, and I needed to take care of the anxiety of this person. The fringe benefit is the joy of her having dinner with her parents. So little effort and such a humanistic action in the universal nature of things.
I as a Physician who has taken the oath of Maimonides to help others, can assess the risk of attending to a virtual stranger, I can only say. I did what was human thing to do.
An older Indian man well versed in the ways of his people said: some people do not evolve well in their thinking and they become inhuman. I did not want to be inhuman
As we were walking back to the house, I said to Youssef, what a lovely evening it was: in the company of friends, spending an agreeable time.
The Great Spirit then tests, who among us are human by sending someone looking for a rapid test for Covid. and send contentment to those who are human and self destructing anger to those who are not.
PS when you are an experienced doctor, you have the discernment to know who is sick or may be sick and you act accordingly.
To dampen the ire of those who might object to actions such as this, I did a Covid test two days after the encounter as is recommended by CDC Negative Of course .
